Ever feel that sense of overwhelming dread when you’re about to tackle something BIG?  It’s that feeling you get right before you’re about to attack that massive pile of homework, study for a crazy 50-page test, or stand up in front of 200 people to do a presentation.  It’s scary, right?  And right before you’re about to meet that challenge head-on, whatever it may be, the biggest question that’s probably floating around in your head is, “How in the world do I even begin?”
    For a lot of us, between school, extracurriculars, and sleep, it’s difficult to find that time that’s required to pull off a stellar resume.  On top of everything else that we juggle as full-time students, it seems like such overwhelming, hard work, and sometimes, to be honest, writing a resume can be quite like pulling teeth.  Especially when you get to that intimidating section called “Experience”.  For some, it seems impossible to be able to summarize their experience in one to two pages, and for others, it’s a struggle even filling up half a page with resume-worthy examples.  If either of these scenarios sounds like you, then you’ve definitely come to the right place!  The following tips are designed to help you combat those anxieties when you finally get to sitting down and writing your resume.

1) Use your PULL.  This handy acronym stands for Paid work, Unpaid work, Learning, and Leisure.  Some people make the mistake of thinking that if it’s not a real job where you get paid, it’s not important enough to include on your resume.  Guess what?  The things that you do outside of the workplace have just as much value!  Rather than focusing on whether or not you’ve had any real jobs in the past, employers are more interested in how your experiences showcase skills and abilities that are directly related to the job that you’re applying for.  Take a moment to group your experiences according to these four categories: paid, unpaid, learning, and leisure.  As you think about the different things that you’ve done, try picking out the experiences that highlight the skills YOU think the employer is looking for.  Depending on the nature of the job, you might want to emphasize your volunteer work or extracurricular activities, or if you are applying to a more technical job, it may be helpful to focus on academic or paid work that you’ve done.  The bottom line is to tailor your experiences to the exact type of work that you’re looking for, and to take into account ALL the things that you’ve been involved in.

2) Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!  When you think about narrowing down your experiences, it can be a pretty hard thing to do.  Figure out which ones are your strongest examples by putting your most relevant and recent experiences at the top of the list.  These experiences are the ones that you want the employer to see first when they pick up your resume.  The trick is that your experiences still have to be in chronological order, starting with the most recent.  If you find yourself running into problems because an experience that you feel is the most relevant doesn’t fit chronologically, you can divide your experience into two categories: Relevant Experience and Additional Experience.  By doing this, you can prioritize your experiences in order of importance without worrying so much about the dates.  A general guideline that you can follow when you get to the stage of describing your experiences is to include the most bulleted points under your top example, and to use less bulleted points as you get further down the list.  (For example, under your first experience, you might list 5 points, under your second experience, 4 points, and so on…)

3)  Be specific.  Create a word picture for the employer so that he or she knows exactly what you did.  The goal of writing the descriptions under each experience is to give the employer a clear idea of what you’ve done and accomplished.  When you write this portion of the resume, try to think back to exactly what you did.  Keep in mind that the employer doesn’t know you, so it’s YOUR job to highlight the skills and achievements that prove you made a difference in the workplace or community.  One way that you can do this is to be quantitative in your descriptions.  Instead of saying that you supervised and taught a large group of children, say that you looked after 27 children.  In some cases, including numbers will highlight an impressive accomplishment.  For example, if you worked as as a business representative, you might be able to demonstrate your effectiveness by stating that you increased the profit margin by 77%.  Whatever the job may be, the important thing is that you demonstrate how your invidiual contributions were invaluable to a certain company or organization.  Once you’ve made this clear to the employer, he or she won’t want to be missing out on all you have to offer!

4) Use action verbs.  When describing your experiences, avoid using generic phrases like, “responsible for” or “worked at”.  Be creative with the words that you use, and try to choose verbs that accurately reflect the things that you did.  Using action verbs emphasizes your effectiveness as an individual, and helps with creating that word picture in the employer’s mind!

5) And last but not least…Think like the employer.  All these things that you’ve been doing, whether it be thinking about your experiences in terms of PULL, prioritizing the things that you have done and ranking them in order of importance, or creating a word picture that demonstrates exactly what you did, lead back to one simple mindset: thinking like the employer!  Put yourself in the employer’s shoes and think about what you would look for.  What types of skills would you want a candidate to have?  What evidence is there to suggest that this individual would be someone you want to hire?  Having this mind-set while you’re writing your resume will help you figure out what areas of your experiences you need to focus on.

    So, next time you find yourself staring at a blank sheet of paper, trying desperately to figure out how you’re going to translate your experiences into words that an employer will understand, breathe easy!  Break the process down into smaller steps.  That way, you won’t feel overwhelmed with trying to take on everything at once.  Do a little bit at a time, and before you know it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that you’re well on your way to mastering this challenging part of the resume!

Until next time,

Phebe Lee